


talk me down

by beanie_betty



Series: I've got you, brother [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 2am phone call, Archie & Jughead BROTP, F/M, Future Fic, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 13:56:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13765572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanie_betty/pseuds/beanie_betty
Summary: The one where Archie can’t sleep, Jughead just wants to sleep, and they both freak out about becoming dads.





	talk me down

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first instalment in a series of one-shots I've got planned revolving around Jughead and Archie being new dads. It got a bit more serious than I had originally intended, but oh well *shrug*
> 
> Big thanks to Jenna (allskynostars) for being my sounding board and my cheerleader <3

Jughead is gradually roused from sleep by an incessant low buzzing noise. He frowns and rolls over, burying his face in his pillow. The noise persists, and through his sleepy haze, he feels a soft blow to his side. He opens his eyes and looks down at the pillow his wife has just thrown at him.

“Jug, make it stop,” Betty grumbles, still mostly asleep. As soon as he sits up, she rolls over, pulling Jughead’s pillow over her head.

As Jughead becomes more awake, he realises that the buzzing must be coming from his phone, set to vibrate. He reaches out his hand and feels around blindly on his bedside table, but comes up short. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and looks around, seeing a faint glow coming from somewhere on the floor.

From the other side of the bed, Betty groans unhappily, and Jughead feels around on the floor, trying to find it before she throws another pillow at him. He finally traces the light under the bed, and his fingers close around his phone where it’s half sticking out of one of his shoes. Not wasting any time wondering why it’s there, he picks it up, barely registering the shock of orange hair in the photo on the screen before he slides his thumb across it, finally silencing the hellish buzzing noise. He looks quickly across at Betty as he raises it to his ear. He breathes a sigh of relief when he hears a soft snore.

“Archie?”

“Hey, Jug,” comes his friend’s voice through the phone.

“What’s up? Is everything okay? Is Veronica okay?” Jughead whispers.

“Yeah, she’s fine. Nothing’s wrong.”

Jughead glances at the digital alarm clock on his bedside table. “Archie, it’s like, 2am. What’s going on?” He watches Betty, but sees no sign of her being disturbed. He’s silently thankful for the fact that she sleeps much more deeply than he does. A sliver of moonlight pokes through the crack in the curtains, and in the dim light, he can just make out the ends of her golden hair poking out from under the pillow she’s still holding over her head.

“Sorry I woke you up. I just...gah, I don’t know, man.” Archie speaks softly, but there is a roughness to his voice. Jughead grabs a sweater from his closet and pads out of the bedroom, closing the door softly behind him. He walks into the living room and flicks on a lamp, bathing the room in a warm glow and throwing shadows onto the walls.

“Give me a second.” Jughead puts his phone down on the arm of the couch and pulls his sweater over his head. He brings his phone to his ear again and flops unceremoniously onto the couch.

“Talk to me, Arch. What’s wrong?”

A rattly sigh comes through the line. “I’m just freaking out, dude.”

“Okay,” Jughead prompts. “About what?”

“It’s just...we’re having a _girl_.”

Jughead scoffs. “Dude, we’re having a _boy_. Don’t stress me out.”

“I know. It’s just...I don’t know little girls, man! I’m an only child, Ronnie’s an only child, neither of us even have girl cousins. I have no idea what to do with a girl.”

“I mean, you feed her, you bath her, you hold her when she cries,” Jughead says lightly. “The normal stuff you do with a baby.”

“Yeah, obviously.” Jughead can almost hear the eye-roll through the line. “But like, what about when she’s bigger? What kinds of stuff do little girls like? What do they talk about? Wha-”

“Woah, Archie,” Jughead interrupts. “You’ll figure it out when you need to, it’ll be okay.”

“You’ve got a little sister, Jug. You’ve been there, you’ve grown up with this stuff,” Archie says, and Jughead can hear a twinge of helplessness in his voice.

“Yeah, and I’ll be right here doing this alongside you, Arch. I’ll do whatever I can to help you guys out, yeah? And your mom and dad will be around to help,” Jughead reminds him. “And don’t forget Veronica,” he adds, laughing softly. “A perfectionist if I ever met one. That little girl is going to be so loved and looked after.”

“Yeah, you’re right. But what about when she grows up? There are so many assholes out there, dude. I just want to be able to protect her from guys like-”

“Reggie?”

Archie huffs a laugh. “I was going to say, like me.”

Jughead frowns. “Archie you’re not an asshole. You made some mistakes when we were younger, but we all did. You’re a good guy. You always have been.”

Archie exhales. “I just...want to do this right, you know? I don’t want to mess anything up. I want to give her the world.”

Jughead’s heart thuds in his chest at that. “And you will.” He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “No doubt. It’s okay to worry though,” he says. “I worry about this stuff too.”

Archie is silent for a moment. Then he asks, “Like what?”

Jughead inhales and runs his free hand through his unruly bed-hair. “You know,” he says uneasily. “The whole...parenting thing.”

“That’s nice and vague, Jug,” Archie laughs. “Come on, I manned up and poured out my feelings to you. Your turn.”

A shaky sigh escapes from Jughead’s chest. “Having a boy…it just feels like we’re falling back into the cycle, you know?”

“The cycle?”

Jughead is quiet.

“Jughead. You are not your dad,” Archie says firmly. “You know that.”

“I-”

“And Betty is not like your mom.”

He scoffs. “Obviously. I just…” he closes his free hand into a fist where it rests on his knee. “I don’t want this kid’s life to be a repeat of my family, and my childhood.” Images flash through his mind; hiding under blankets with his sister while his parents yell at each other, sleeping at the drive-in, accepting his Serpent jacket with blood running down his face.

“It won’t be. You’re not the kind of guy that will let that happen.” Archie’s voice is soft.

Jughead shakes his head. His hand comes up to rub absent-mindedly at his right shoulder. He hears a sigh through the phone.

“Jughead. You love Betty, right?”

Jughead rolls his eyes. “No, Archie. I thought to myself, ‘This girl is quite decent-looking and puts up with my bullshit, I might as well marry her’.”

“Jug.”

He blows out a steady breath. “Of course I love her. More than life.”

“And you’re going to love this baby, right?”

He thinks of Betty’s rounded belly, and all the time he’s spent looking at it, feeling it, and talking to it. “Already do.”

“Then that’s enough. You’ve got the most important part covered, man. I know you, and I know that you are enough exactly the way you are. You’re not going to mess this up, because you’re writing your own story,” Archie says, dead serious, and then sniggers. “Get it? Cause you’re a writer.”

Jughead groans. “Archie, that was lame.”

“I’m not taking it back, bro.”

Jughead laughs, and then says, “Seriously, though. Thank you. Means a lot.”

“No problem, Jug. You’re my brother, and we’re in this together, alright?”

“Yeah.”

“I talked to my dad today, by the way. He says hi.”

Jughead smiles. “Tell him I say hi back.”

“Will do.”

It’s quiet for a couple of beats, and then Archie says, “Well, I should probably let you get back to bed. Sorry for waking you up.”

“Nah, it’s okay. I’d usually still be up at this time anyway.”

Jughead hears Archie groan, and it sounds like he’s stretching. “Ah, how parenthood changes people,” his friend says airily.

“Says you. How’s the sympathetic weight gain going?” Jughead teases.

“Fuck off, Jug.”

“I’m just kidding. What would Archie Andrews be without his abs?”

“Okay, I’m hanging up now.”

“Alright,” Jughead laughs. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Later, bro.”

Jughead ends the call and stands up. He stretches until his joints crack and then turns off the lamp, heading back into the bedroom. Betty is still lying on her side, but has mercifully let go of his pillow in her sleep, so he reclaims it and climbs back into bed beside her. He shuffles up behind her and brushes his hand over her rounded belly. Betty snuggles back into him, still sleeping peacefully, and languidly moves her arm so her hand can cover his.

Jughead’s heart swells. _Yeah, we’re gonna be okay._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave me a comment if you so desire, I'd love to hear from you. Or visit me over on tumblr @beanie-betty :) More to come!


End file.
